Ordinaire in Oakland a shrine to natural wine

People enjoy wines at the Ordinaire wine bar in Oakland, Calif. on March 3, 2016.

People enjoy wines at the Ordinaire wine bar in Oakland, Calif. on...

The wine is cloudy in the glass, a kind of pale-golden milk, wafting a cowshed’s worth of organic-matter aromas: wet earth, animal hide, sweet-smelling hay. When I taste it, its acidity sears. A tangy bacterial thing (see also: kombucha; sour beer) makes my mouth pucker, and among its pretty floral flavors there emerges a more pungent biotic note, reminiscent of cannabis.

This is the Partida Creus Vinel.lo Blanco 2014, a blend of white grapes including Garnacha Blanca, Xarello and Moscatel from Baix Penedès in Spain’s Catalonia region. It’s $11 a glass at Ordinaire, the Oakland wine bar.

I smile as I taste the wine, recognizing its funky idiosyncrasy, its “is this even wine?” quality as a signature of Partida Creus — famous in certain occult, eccentric wine circles — and indeed, as a marker of its larger category, in which Ordinaire deals exclusively: natural wine.

What is “natural wine”? The term’s elusiveness excites its advocates and invokes criticism from its detractors. Isn’t all wine natural? Yes, but as George Orwell might have written, some wines are more natural than others.

“I think it says a lot about the establishment that they’re always criticizing natural wine for not having a definition,” says Bradford Taylor, the owner of Ordinaire. “I think there’s something productive about how nebulous the term ‘natural’ is, how it opens itself up to debate every time it comes up.”

Nebulous charm aside, “natural wine” is basically characterized by a lack of human intervention. Natural wines have nothing, or almost nothing, added to them: no chemical treatment in the vineyard; no yeast to jump-start a fermentation; no fining or filtration; certainly no sugar or acid adjustments. There might be added sulfur dioxide, in minimal amounts, to prevent spoilage, but bonus points if you go totally sans soufre.

These practices could theoretically produce any sort of wine, but often they produce wines that consumers of more-mainstream wines might find off-putting. Sometimes this simply means light-bodied, juicy, high-acid reds, which reject richness in favor of freshness. Some natural wines are cloudy and semi-opaque (that’s the lack of filtration), and they can sometimes (not always) be funky or dirty-tasting — as opposed to the crystal-clean products you might get from a generous sulfur regimen. To natural wine lovers like Taylor, that’s precisely the appeal. “I love wines that aren’t trying to be reproducible,” he says. “Wines that have their own confidence and energy, that are trying to be merely what they are.”

Ordinaire, which opened in 2013, is Taylor’s shrine to this ethos. A doctoral candidate in English at UC Berkeley, he is writing a dissertation on “the concept of taste in early 20th century literature, as it toggles between an aesthetic sensibility and a more gustatory, more physical sense of eating.” Adding to this academic pursuit was Taylor’s love of the natural wine bars of Paris — places like La Verre Volé — which serve as meeting places for a like-minded community. To Taylor, these bars seemed to serve as both salons for wine intellectuals geeking out, and also casual, unadorned saloons, with inexpensive wine and simple food.

Wine bottles, their prices scribbled in chalk above the label, line the walls of Ordinaire like books on a bookshelf. You can buy them to take home, or open one here for an excessively reasonable $10 corkage fee. There are 10 or so wines by the glass — on a recent night, all European — and several more on tap (Matthiasson Chardonnay, Folk Machine Pinot Noir, Donkey & Goat Counoise), available by glass, half-carafe or carafe. Food options are cheese, charcuterie and Portuguese sardines; on some weeknights, neighbor Boot & Shoe Service will deliver pizza.

The heroes of natural wine are represented, both domestic (Clos Saron, from the Sierra Foothills) and foreign (Clos du Tue-Boeuf, from France’s Loire Valley). If it all sounds too crunchy-granola for you, there’s also excellent normal-tasting wine here: Cabernet from Corison; Champagne from Bérèche et Fils and Laherte Freres champagne. There are great bottles for $20, and for $130.

Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle

Sardines and bread at the Ordinaire wine bar in Oakland, Calif. are seen on March 3, 2016.

Sardines and bread at the Ordinaire wine bar in Oakland, Calif. are...

In the spirit of La Verre Volé, Ordinaire is spare, unpolished, even a little disheveled: Open boxes lie along the walls; magazines are piled on the bench of a wooden piano. It’s relaxing, like you’re in someone’s living room. Pours are not stingy, and unsolicited top-offs are not uncommon. The crowd isn’t obviously hip. They stand even when there is plenty of available seating. They leave their belongings unattended at a table, sometimes for quite a long time, when they step outside to smoke.

The insistent easygoingness can feel a little conspicuous. But then, suddenly, Ordinaire will get serious on you.

If you’d like to try something unusual and new, you’d be wise to say so, and a staff member — often Taylor or his right-hand man, Quinn Kimsey-White — will gleefully guide you. Their excitement is contagious. As you listen to them, you’ll feel transported to the mountains of the Ardèche or to a dank, dusty cellar in the wilds of Touraine. As you taste, you’ll relish all the weird flavors with the feverish open-mindedness you generally reserve for stinky cheese.

“What we try to do,” Taylor explains, “is get (customers) excited about the things that are disturbing them about the wine. I like when wines disappoint us or exceed our expectations.” I like that, too. I like wines that surprise, that taste like something I’ve never tasted before. And I like that best when I’m in the hands of a seasoned and enthusiastic guide. To me, that’s the joy of hanging out at Ordinaire.

While I was perusing the shelves recently for a $30-ish bottle of wine, Kimsey-White appeared, offering assessments of the different cuvées of Julien Altaber, a producer from Burgundy’s Saint Aubin whose wines include a skin-fermented Aligoté ($33) and a Pinot Noir from the obscure Maranges appellation ($37).

Photo: John Storey / Special To The Chronicle

The wine selection at the Ordinaire wine bar in Oakland, Calif. is seen on March 3, 2016.

The wine selection at the Ordinaire wine bar in Oakland, Calif. is...

We chose Altaber’s Côte du Nuits Villages 2014 ($37) and ordered a can of sardines. We sat at a table. In a wise move, Kimsey-White decanted the wine; it needed oxygen. The sardines, which we spread on bread, tasted meaty, creamy and mild — considerably less assertive than the Pinot. My companion was a natural wine novice, and seemed a bit confused by the whole situation. He thought the wine smelled like feces and feet. Exactly, I said.